


In Different Colors

by brilligspoons



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-13 00:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brilligspoons/pseuds/brilligspoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha takes Clint on a date. Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Different Colors

Natasha knocks on his door at two thirty in the morning on a Tuesday, and despite the fact that he hadn't been sleeping, Clint glares at her when she pushes past him and makes herself at home on his couch. She pulls a piece of laminated paper out of her bag and waves it in his direction until he takes it from her. Clint sits down next to her and continues to frown while ignoring the urge to put his head in her lap and tell her he missed her.

"Don't be a grouch," she says. "If you'd come to California with me like I asked you to, we could have been past this conversation already."

"It was a milk run," he replies, briefly looking over the card in his hand. "Fury should have sent a green agent, not you."

"It was the closest thing to a vacation I've ever had," Natasha continues. "I learned how to surf. I also stopped an assassination attempt on a visiting dignitary, but mostly I surfed and ate too much sushi."

"There's no such thing as too much sushi," Clint says automatically. He looks down at the card and inspects it a bit more closely. "What the hell is this? 'Cook dinner together'? 'Go apple-picking'? 'Visit a haunted house'?" He glances back up at Natasha. "You don't even like apples, and I really don't think going to a place where it's dark and people jump out at you from around corners is really the best environment for people like us."

Natasha shrugs and swings her arm around his neck. Clint resists the urge to sigh loudly and settles his head down on her shoulder. He hesitates for just a moment before nudging her collarbone with his nose.

"We can build up to the haunted house," Natasha says after a brief silence.

Clint snorts and presses ever so slightly closer to her. "You can explain it to me tomorrow."

***

The list, Natasha explains to him over breakfast, is the product of notes taken during her stint as Pepper Potts' personal assistant. Clint doesn't bother asking how the topic even came up in the first place, even though he's desperately curious.

"So these are all things Pepper did with her boyfriends in high school and college?" Clint asks.

"Yes," says Natasha, "and they all sounded pleasant."

" _Pleasant_."

"Stark's fighting with Fury to have us permanently assigned as Avengers," she says, "so we'll be moving into Stark Tower once the repairs are completed. We'll have more free time on our hands. Theoretically, that is. Providing we don't get invaded by hostile beings. Again."

"I can't believe Fury hasn't found the bug you planted in his coat yet," Clint says. "Also, thank you for officially jinxing us. I'll go make sure my quiver's back in from the lab and restocked."

Natasha ignores him in favor of blowing on her coffee. "The list is in no particular order. Which one do you want to do first?"

Clint sighs and rests his head down on the table. "Let's get through the moving into Stark Tower part first, okay? Then we can worry about going on dates."

***

Natasha tricks him into going apple-picking before they move into the tower - and by 'tricks him,' Clint means he wakes up in the backseat of a moving car early one Saturday morning in October. It's not just him and Natasha in the car, either. Steve is in the passenger seat and whips his head around to grin at Clint when he asks, "Where the hell are we going?"

"An apple orchard," Steve tells him. "Natasha said I could tag along even though it's a date, and then she made me carry you down the stairs to the car - I hope that's okay."

"Natasha," says Clint.

"I made you a list," she says, glancing at him in the rear view mirror. "It was laminated and everything. That means you had fair warning that this was going to happen." Natasha pats Steve on the shoulder. "Ignore him. He's the worst when he's just woken up."

"I'm even worse when I've woken up in what is basically a hostage situation," Clint says.

"I'll buy you a cider doughnut," Natasha says.

Clint considers telling her that doughnuts are not an acceptable apology for kidnapping him, but his stomach chooses that exact moment to rumble loudly, and, well, cider doughnuts _are_ his favorite kind. "Fine," he says. "But I want two of them. And a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream."

"Done," says Natasha.

***

"To be honest, I didn't even know the two of you were together," Steve says. "Do you mind if I ask how you - you know. Became involved?"

"We met in Vienna," says Clint around a mouthful of doughnut. "I was supposed to kill her, you know. She was a mark." He laughs. "Can you imagine trying to kill Natasha? Anyway, I took her back to Fury instead. A year or two after that, we were in Bolivia in the middle of a land dispute and decided to give it a try. I think we were both riddled with bullets the first time we had sex." Clint laughs again when Steve shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

A few yards away from where they're sitting, Natasha is haggling with the owner of the orchard over the price per bag of apples. Her curls, longer than they have been for months and months, bounce every time she shakes or nods her head, and Clint idly wonders how long it'll take for her to get frustrated with the length and chop it all off again. Her shoulders are loose, and the set of her spine is relaxed, more so than it ever has been in all the years Clint has known her. The sweatshirt she's wearing is his, or was, now that she's gotten ahold of it, and just as Clint looks over to Steve and is about to give him more than the CliffNotes version of how they met, he stops and glances back at Natasha.

Natasha, in a sweatshirt and jeans and thick-soled boots, set against apple trees and the brilliant oranges and reds and yellows of New Jersey autumn foliage. Not holding a gun. Not bloodied or bruised or shouting orders at him. This, it hits him, is a new Natasha, one he's never seen before, and yet -

"It doesn't matter," he says.

"What?" asks Steve. "What doesn't matter?"

Clint sits back in the chair and looks up at the sky. "Ah, nothing. Just had a thought that made it past my brain-to-mouth filter. Must've been channeling Stark for a second there."

***

Natasha buys him three doughnuts to eat at the orchard and brings another dozen home with her. He barely manages to put the box on the kitchen table before she's pulling him into the bedroom and tugging off his clothes.

"So that was a date," Clint says much, much later. "Only with Steve."

"A chaperoned date," Natasha says. "I've always wondered what those were like."

"There wasn't much for him to chaperone."

"You don't know what I wanted to do to you when you were pulling apples off the higher branches," she says. Natasha pauses, then says, "But it was good, right?"

Clint closes his eyes and remembers bright sunlight illuminating her hair and eyes and says, "Yeah. It was good."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to **darthjamtart** , **pocky_slash** , and **waxedpaperdoor** for all their cheer-leading and input on this one.  <3!


End file.
